Item: Hyper-V
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Hyper-V

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have configured stand-alone Hyper-V servers and failover Hyper-V clusters. All of our servers are currently running under Hyper-V. From a cost perspective, all servers running windows under the Hyper-V node are free as long as you have a Windows datacenter license. This helps us keep costs down, and allows us to spin up new servers without additional licensing costs for the OS.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Live migration.
High availability.
Easily create new VMS.
Dynamically adjust RAM.

Cons

Troubleshooting can be difficult.
Occasional live migration failures are causing all other VM's to fail.
A fair bit of setup is needed to get a cluster configured and up.

Return on Investment

No cost for VM OS's when running Windows data center on the Hyper-V Node.
Windows standard comes with 2 VM guest OS licenses.
Allows you to run an entirely Microsoft environment, no VMware or other training required.

Alternatives Considered

I've used VMware and Hyper-V. Due to Hyper-V being included with Windows for no extra charge, it makes it the default option for us. Why spend money for a 3rd-party solution when Microsoft provides one for free with the purchase of their server operating systems? It's also available for free inside Pro level and higher versions of Windows 10.

Other Software Used

Windows Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager

Likelihood to Recommend

I've always had good success with Hyper-V. Since we moved to Windows 2016, we have had issues with Windows updates taking hours to install. The server will sit at "please wait," while updates are installed for hours. It used to be minutes with Windows 2012R2. As a result, updating our Hyper-V servers takes an entire day instead of hours. Hopefully, this issue will be resolved with Windows 2019 Hyper-V.

Hyper-V Feature Ratings

Comments

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Hyper-V built into Windows for free